Eastern Highlands Grade B-15

The story behind Eastern Highlands Gr B-15

The PNG Grade B-15 comes from smallholder farms in a remote area of Papua New Guinea, in the Eastern Highlands Province. The area is on the slope of a tropical volcano and has rich volcanic soil with a deep layer of top soil. The strong wet season makes accessing this area difficult as the roads become unpassable for a large part of the season.

Most coffee farmers in Papua New Guinea are smallholders with one or less hectares and sell wet parchment to local mills near Goroka, who store and process the coffee for export. But at the farm level, great care is taken for the picking and processing the coffees; they pick only ripe cherry and use small hand pulpers to process and wash the coffee.

This lot comes to us from our exporting partner, Monpi. Monpi was established in 2002 and they work to increase access to quality coffee throughout Papua New Guinea by investing in community services, agricultural expertise, and infrastructure.

Grade B-15 refers to the coffee quality. B-15 coffees, which used to be called AX, cups well and are at least 90% screen size 15. In green grading, they are differentiated from the higher grades because they allow up to 40 defects per kg, vs 10 for Grade A.